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When everyone gets the same spark: how AI inspiration shapes creative diversity in the creator economy
Vogel, Franziska
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Förderer, Jens
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Tucker, Catherine
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URL:
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https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_i...
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Additional URL:
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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/406889489...
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Document Type:
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Working paper
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Year of publication:
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2026
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Place of publication:
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Amsterdam
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Publishing house:
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Elsevier
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Publication language:
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English
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Institution:
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Business School > Lehrstuhl Wirtschaftsinformatik II (Förderer 2025-)
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Subject:
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650 Management
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Keywords (English):
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artificial intelligence , user-generated content , online platforms , creator and attention economy , creative diversity , generative ai , difference-in-differences , youtube , AI-assisted ideation
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Abstract:
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AI models are increasingly embedded in creative platforms as upstream sources of inspiration. We study how such AI-assisted inspiration affects the amount and creative diversity of realized output when many producers draw on a shared generative system. Our setting is YouTube’s rollout of the Inspiration Tab, an ideation feature that suggests video ideas, hooks, and storylines but does not generate videos. Exploiting regional variation in access between U.S. and European creators, we estimate difference-in-differences models on a matched panel of incumbent YouTube creators. First, access increases video production by 4.1\%. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that the increase is consistent with the treatment relaxing an upstream ideation constraint conditional on complementary implementation capabilities, rather than simply lowering the marginal cost of producing additional videos. Second, access also changes the composition of creativity. Second, treated creators' videos become more similar to their own prior output along semantic and topical dimensions, reducing within-creator diversity, while similarity across creators is unchanged. Therefore AI-assisted inspiration intensifies localized exploitation around creator-specific niches rather than inducing ecosystem-wide convergence. Downstream, treated creators receive 12.47\% more total views, but views per video fall, suggesting that additional supply expands aggregate attention while lowering average returns to AI-enabled output. We find no evidence of significant entry by new creators. These results show that even when AI is not deployed in production, it can substantially alter the amount and creative diversity of realized output. In creative markets, therefore, ideation-stage AI affects realized output by relaxing an important upstream constraint, but realized output remains constrained by the complementary capabilities and experience needed to implement suggested ideas, as well as shaped by creators’ incentives for exploitation and audience legitimacy.
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 | Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie. |
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